THE LATE ERA: The Voice of the Apparition
by Matthew Snee
Summary: Set 2,000 years after the Battle of Yavin, this AU story depicts a galaxy without the Jedi or Sith, and features a sentimental bounty hunter pursued by unknown enemies. Story rewritten and edited, with smaller chapters. Final chapter up!
1. Chapter One

**STARWARS: The Late Era**

**Story One:**

**The Voice of the Apparition**

By Matthew Snee

_2,000 Years After the Battle of Yavin, the Jedi and the Sith have all but disappeared from the galaxy, taking their endless war with them, replaced by the Five Houses, independent clans of Force-users that maintain a fragile peace throughout the Republic. _

_Life in the galaxy goes on, and through the years sentients are born, live, and die, their stories forgotten except upon the unreadable atoms of time._

_But one day along the Outer Rim of the galaxy, in the remote system of Fengdulax – known best for being unknown – bounty hunter Fimm Zobra meets his latest client… _

**1.**

The great sea of stars beckons us all. From the shores of planets, to the cold vacuity of the heavens, adventure and sorrow wait from sun to sun – infinity expands across all horizons: this galaxy is endless.

But we are concerned with a single ship, zipping through the charged particles and fragile plasma of space until it reaches the foreign atmospheres of Fengdulax, a small system on the perilous reaches of the Outer Rim of the galaxy. The ship plummets and jets until it is tugged gently into the gravity well of the moon Ooro, which spans around the hideous gas planet Fengdulax V.

The ship is modern, made of abstract shapes and lopsided engines, with slits for windows and multiple turrets for defense – a private frigate of some sort, born in some unimaginably large factory on some unimaginably strange planet far from here. It floats through the upper skies of Ooro certain and calm, piercing the purple clouds and acidic rain, its engines blasting smoothly. Cleared for landing, it descends upon the moon's city, gliding through miles of computer-regulated air and vector pulses.

The ship settles into a gentle landing on a raised platform on the outskirts of the city, where the buildings are stubby compared with the rest of the undulating avenues. Other craft buzz around the jagged architecture. All is shrouded in pattering rain and low cloud.

The airlock opens and a tall, dark, hooded figure emerges, accompanied by a female-shaped droid that wheels across the rain puddles on four thin legs of braided, blinking metal. "Terrible weather, sir," the droid says in its electronic but feminine voice. "And no welcoming party."

The figure nods, but says nothing. He looks up at the sky, where Fengdulax V looms across everything, its magnetic groan roaring as it rotates, an object of almost obscene size. As a matter of habit, the figure brushes his fingers against the butt of his blaster, holstered to his belt, but he does not draw it. This revealed nervousness is just a sliver of him though, and for the most part he is imposing, hulking, with broad shoulders and a thick girth. His robes blow in the wind, revealing the legs of a spacesuit beneath – green, made of a reflective material – accompanied by black space boots. He also wears green gloves, and when we see glimpse of his face through the shadows, we see that he is white, with numerous visible cybernetic enhancements. His true visage is not revealed though, and his eyes, nose and mouth remain obscured by the hood.

They make their way across the platform to the standing elevator, which is ancient, dilapidated, but still functional, in a rattling, shaking kind of way. The two of them ride down a floor and are dispatched into a large lobby ripe with abandonment. The ceilings are tall; the place is alien. It's dark too, but deceptively so: our visitors can tell by their implants that the place is bathed in ultraviolet light, naked to the human eye, another clue to their location.

But they are distracted from this by the fetid smell in the air: alien, infernally recognizable, as no other creature has such a stench. This is intermingled with other exotic perfumes and fuels, and an overwhelming sense of… something –

_Something is dying here. _

The front desk is empty. There is no one in the lobby at all, and a holographic painting that obviously once hung majestic on the near wall now droops from one corner, its neon light flickering. Rubbish is strewn across the floor.

"Where is everyone?" the droid asks our visitor in a frightened voice. The visitor does not answer, stepping toward the hall behind the desk, which is further shadowed. Smoke oozes through the air; some sort of burning plant of some sort, or oil, rather than a machine of some sort. The air is damp with organics, and warm. They step beneath a skylight, through which a hazy blue light seeps through, illuminating them suddenly; the droid gleams, the visitor as menace. The two of them issue back into the darkness: the droid's eyes glowing, the visitor's cybernetic readouts flashing beneath his robes. There is a wide archway, leading to main throne room, which is barren, but for a bulbous shape at the back, in the darkest area.

The shape is alive, huffing, its wormlike body twitching, and as the visitor and his droid come in front of it, they can see through the darkness it is nothing but a Hutt, an enormous gastropod with eyes, mouth, nostrils, shoulders, and pudgy little arms and hands. Its eyes shine, but the rest of it is cloaked. It draws in a deep, rasping breath, and then speaks Huttese, a low, guttural language of swollen vowels and cynical consonants.

"Bounty hunter! I have heard legends of your cruelty throughout the Outer Rim." The Hutt seems like a she, though the Hutts are a Hermaphroditic race – the vile thing is most probably pregnant, or nursing a larva in its blood sack. She breathes heavily after these words utter from her mouth, and her tongue sticks out of her lips. Her voice is huge – but weak.

_She is dying. _

The visitor replies, in perfect Huttese, with an unassuming but wicked voice, "So I have heard legends of yours."

The Hutt's eyes light up. "Take back your hood, so I might see your face."

The visitor does so, pulling back the fabric to reveal his true cyborg head: bald but for strips of red hair, face scarred and freckled, skin covered in cybernetics, computers regulating him, enhancing him, supporting him. He is otherwise human though, with a pale light and confident eyebrows, with a stump of a nose and a small but certain mouth. His eyes are brown and hard.

"Zobra…" the Hutt says, smiling. "Fimm Zobra."

"Hello Lord Hutt," Zobra the bounty hunter responds, bowing sarcastically. "Paaxta."

"I haven't seen you in many revolutions now," Paaxta the Hutt says. "I never thought I would grow so found of a human. But despite yourself, you are trustworthy and dependable to a god like me."

Hutt's think they are gods in comparison to humans. They live for thousands of years, while we only have this brief flash.

"Those are kind words," says Zobra. His droid is silent as the two sentients converse. "Are they going to cost me?"

Paaxta the Hutt lets out a booming laughter. "Always thinking about money, Zobra. You never change."

"I change the bounty hunter argues. His droid nods.

"I suppose you do," says Paaxta the Hutt. "Everything changes. The galaxy is breaking: can you feel it?"

"I feel it," Zobra says. Life has been getting more ominous around the sector. He peers into the Hutt's countenance, trying to fathom her motivations. His fingers almost brush against his blaster once more.

"I break too," says the Hutt. "I'm dying."

"I can tell," Zobra says. "Look – why did you ask me here?"

"Because I wanted to see you before I died."

"That's bantha fodder," Zobra mutters. "If you don't have a job, I'm leaving right now."

"I have a job." Paaxta the Hutt grins. She tosses a datacron at the bounty hunter, who catches it without effort.

"Who is it?" Zobra asks, examining the data.

"Let's say it's an old friend."

"Who?"

"Me."

Zobra doesn't flinch. "For how much?"

Paaxta laughs again. "For all I have left."

"And how many credits is that?"

"It's all on the datacron," the Hutt explains.

Zobra hands it to the droid,who scans it and nods, the noise of its servos whirring. That solved, Zobra moves on to the personal business. "Are you sure?" he asks Paaxta.

The Hutt grimaces. "Of course."

"I don't understand why you would want to die like this," says Zobra.

"The alternative is worse, little man," Paaxta says, angry now.

"I guess that makes sense. But why me?"

"No one else would have been adequate."

It is quite the compliment. Despite the circumstances, Paaxta is a powerful entity. Why she has fallen into such despair – beyond her disease – is not something Zobra can comphrehend. Her enemies swirl around her. She only feigns destitution – the money is somewhere. It is a great treasure.

"What about the youngling you carry?"

Paaxta frowns and grunts.

"I guess I can't say no," Zobra tells her, realizing the terrible spot he is in.

"That's my favorite bounty hunter," Paaxta says, smiling again. "You never turn down a bounty."

"That's not true either," Zobra protests.

"Regardless – you are the best. And I want to control my death, as I controlled my life. But I will not commit suicide. That is not like a Hutt. But I will die by your blaster, and all will be as it is supposed to be. I never thought I would live this long…"

Zobra does not disturb the Hutt's monologue, only stands there itching for his blaster. "When do you want it done?" he asks.

"Now, if possible."

"Like this?"

"Just like this."

Zobra shrugs, drawing his blaster. He shoots Paaxta in the head five times. She groans, and dies, smoke rising from her skull. After it is over, he moves closer to the body to make sure it has been done. She does not breathe, and a feeling of death he knows quite well spills upon the Force around him. She is gone.

An easy job, for a lot of credits – but also a curse he knows he will never escape.

He knows a little bit about Hutt anatomy. Bending over her body, he checks Paaxta's blood sack for her larva, biting his lip as he manages this grotesque maneuver.

The blood sack is empty. Her child is gone.


	2. Chapter 2

**STARWARS: The Late Era: The Voice of the Apparition**

**2.**

Zobra and the droid return to the ship, which still lays hissing and puffing gass as it waits on the platform. The inside of the vessel is lit with warm colors and sympathetic illumination. "Cee-Dee-Seven," Zobra tells the droid, "Get dinner ready for me."

"Yes, sir."

"And I want a full report on those credits."

"Yes, sir, in a moment, sir." The droid blinks and her motivators click. "Sir – if you don't mind me asking, where will we go?"

"I don't know, Cee-Dee. I'm thinking about it."

"Yes, sir."

"I think we should lay low for a while."

"A wise choice, sir."

Zobra smirks. _Stupid droid._ But he is silent as she disappears into the galley. He sits back in his captain's chair and muses on the stars in front of him –

_She's dead. Now what? Now I hide. Where? I can't go home. I can't go anywhere. I won't be able to hide the money. The other Hutts will hunt me forever, as a matter of pride and duty. I killed a Hutt. And not just any Hutt. _

Zobra closes his eyes and, flipping a switch in his mind, turns his cybernetic senses to a lower setting, sick of computer-heightened reality. One of his implants releases a muscle relaxer into his blood, and he reclines further in his chair.

_I'm dead. _

"Sir?" It's the droid again.

"Yeah?"

"Your dinner is hot now, sir."

Zobra jumps forward and urges himself to the dining area, where he sits and eats whatever strange concoction the droid has made this time – which tastes worse than the breath of Ragnorian splinterbeasts. "You know, sir, maybe we can go back home, sir."

The bounty hunter snorts. The droid was speaking of their home on Jaatlipass, on the other side of Hutt Space. "Quit your blasted prattling," he tells the droid. "I told you I don't know where we'll go."

The droid remains silent for quite some time. But, once Zobra has finished with his meal, the rust bucket goes back at it: "We can ask mother, sir. Don't you think she would have good advice?"

Zobra sighs. He pulls out his blaster and aims it at the droid's head. The nerves in his finger fire and he pulls the trigger, shooting a beam of light across the air into the droid's face. Sparks fly, and Cee-Dee-Seven falls backwards onto the floor with a "Thud!"

The bounty hunter stands up, in shock at his own actions. "Cee-Dee?" he asks. "You okay?"

The droid emits a series of beeps and then raises itself up onto its elbows. There is a large, smoldering hole in the center of her left cheek, where the laser hit. Burnt wires pop out now, and one of her eyes have gone dark. "I think so, sir. I'm sorry, sir."

Paaxta was very wealthy, and she left a good bit of that wealth to Zobra, hidden across systems all over the galaxy, in a multitude of currencies, gems, commodities, stocks, real estate, and other properties both intellectual and concrete. _I'm rich now_, Zobra thinks, _but at what price?_ He will have to spend most of the money just protecting himself from those seeking revenge or reward.

He thought of his father, who died when Zobra was eight years old. "Do the unexpected," he father always said. This wisdom has served Zobra well.

He searches his mind, aided by the rushing circuitry implanted in his skull, hooked up to the galactic HoloNet, listening, patient, looking for the secret clues the Force is placing before him. He saw omens in other people's misfortune, and fluctuations in planetary weathers.

The truth, when it comes, is like cold plasteel. It numbs his heart and shocks his brain. He jumps to the computer. "Where is it?" he asks himself. "Where?" Its name escapes him. All he can remember is the planet's violent skies, the heat in its wind. "Where?" he asks again.

"Sir, are you okay, sir?" Cee-Dee rolls into the cockpit, ever vigilant to his health. He is all she has.

"Yes!" he shouts at her. "No!"

The droid is taken aback, confused. "Which is it, sir?"

"No," he says. "I can't remember the name of the system. I went there, years ago, on a job. There's something there, something more valuable than money."

"What, sir?"

Zobra, frustrated that the nav computer doesn't instantly know where he wants to go, stamps his foot, startling Cee-Dee. "Something…" he says. "Someone. It was fifteen years ago now; but I can still remember the sky – what ugly skies. And the smell of the droids, after they worked in the toxic ocean all day. I can remember…"

Cee-Dee-Seven looks at him, curious. "Sir, if you don't mind me suggesting, I mean, my suggestion is, sir, that we got to Hueron's datalith on Jaatlipaas."

Jaatlipaas. The droid seems determined to go there. But he admits to himself that the droid is right – or it feels right, through the Force, anyway.

After that Zobra retires to his cabin, undressing and spreading himself onto his bed. Then a voice comes into his mind:

"_Beware, villain…_" says the voice. It is as rich in his head as any other sound. Where does the voice come from? Who is it?

"Who are you?" Zobra asks the air, grabbing his blaster from underneath his pillow. "Show yourself."

The voice laughs. Zobra can feel a paralyzing cold at his fingertips and along his neck. A red light enters the through the bulkhead and casts a crimson color over everything. The light reveals the image of an old man, clean-cut and dressed in black robes, unlike a hologram, real. Zobra has never seen anything so strange and supernatural, religious as he might be, and he knows it isn't artificial, isn't some trick – that this is a true apparition in front of him.

Zobra begs the Force for mercy. At this the old man laughs again. "_You would have better luck breathing in the void without a spacesuit. Why do mortals always worship and fear the impossible_?"

The bounty hunter shoots his blaster three times, each shot passing through the light into the bulkhead behind it. _I'm helpless_, Zobra thinks. _How did this happen?_

The apparition grows taller. His eyes are like a hound's, and he speaks in a distinctly Coruscanti accent. _"I mean you no harm,"_ the apparition says. "_And you cannot harm me."_

"What are you?"

"I am a thing that was," the ghost describes.

"You're dead?"

"_Yes."_

"But… how?"

"_Practice_," the apparition tells Zobra.

"What do you want?"

"_Why a job, Zobra, of course."_

"A job?"

"_Yes_," the red apparition answers.

"Well, spit it out," says Zobra.

"_Tell me,"_ the apparition ventures. "_Are you familiar with the Dark side of the Force?"_

"I know about the colors of the Houses," Zobra says. Everyone does."

_ "Yes, but everyone has forgotten one little thing,"_ the red apparition smiles, evil. _"The Dark side."_

"I don't know what that is," Zobra says, unusually flustered, but at the same time resigned.

_"You will,"_ says the red apparition. _"You will."_


	3. Chapter 3

**STARWARS: The Late Era: The Voice of the Apparition**

**3.**

Jaatlipaas is one of the galaxy's founts of cyborg culture; it is where Zobra grew up. Seated deep in Hutt Space – protected from the Republic – it is a strange jewel to the sentients that call it home. The planet itself is as mechanically altered and regulated as its inhabitants, spires of circuitry spanning miles into the soil, oceans thick with nanotech, atmospheric intensity managed by autonomous droid craft. Still, life thrives there, and cybernetic creatures mingle within cybernetic forests, cities hidden among computer-soaked fauna.

Cybernetics are a part of every aspect of a cyborg's life, from conception to death. Implants had built themselves in his body when he had still been in his mother's womb, regulating his development from a few simple cells to a complex human being – or, sort of human being.

It's not a long trip from Fengdulax, and Zobra spends his time counting the money in his new accounts – blessing and curse – still trying to assure himself of some sort of factual conclusion to his meeting with Paaxta. What did she do with her larva? How did despair choke her so – Zobra remembered the creature as a happy alien, despite her crimes and cruelties. Does anyone other than him truly mourn her? He wonders.

The yellow globe of Jaatlipaas appears in the firmament as they cut out of hyperspace, slowing down to a sane speed and arriving surreptitiously. It is important to Zobra to keep a low profile, but he promises himself he will see his mother, no matter what the danger is. Hueron's datalith might tell him where to go – but then again it might not. Zobra has obligations here. It is not a planet he visits lightly.

His ship, the Star Swimmer, slips through the skies, zooming through the clouds and descending in Jaatlipaas's main metropolitan area, which thousands of miles of technological jungle. He watches sadly as the city flies below him. It has been years. The planet only holds sad memories for him.

He lands in a public spaceport according to the vectors of Jaatlipaas aerial traffic control. Once he lands he steps out of the ship with second thoughts. Cee-Dee-Seven stays on the ship. Like on Fengdulax, there is no one to greet him, but he feels as though his arrival has not come unnoticed. Someone out there watches me even now, he thinks. He remains calm, fighting the craving in his fingers for the cool metal of his blaster.

Jaatlipaas can be unsettling to non-cyborgs, the planet a mixture of the real and the artificial – these two lines intersecting like bands of light. The air is thick with bug droids, and the horizons are covered with nanoclouds. There is a rapid smell of machines on the air. Zobra departs from the spaceport and rides the public monorail, which weaves through the city and bears him to the deeper suburbs, where his mother lives.

The train is filled with all manner of cyborgs – mostly human, but som alien, as well as a few droids and other half-sentients including a group of clones laughing as they place sabbacc together, all identical, their eyes yellow with low frequency genetic interference. The clones faces are obviously designed, as nature would never create anything so symmetrical, and their voices are high as they speak in some mathematical language Zobra does not understand. They are probably fugitives from the Republic, like most non-cyborgs on the planet, just looking for a safe place to live their lives unhampered by galactic mores.

Zobra uses the time on the train to delve into his memories of the planet he is searching for, its skies enflamed in his head, the sound of a baby crying just on the edge of his consciousness. Many years have passed, and he wonders what has become of that crying child, just as he wonders what has happened to Paaxta's larva. This is his only hope, this old history of him, one of his transgressions that will forever linger behind his eyes. It is strange that the name off the world he seeks escapes him; his mind is backed up on datacrons searchable by software – but still the truth lies just beyond his mind's grasp, encircled in mist, and he doubts reality for a moment as the monorail shivers upon its repulsor lifts.

He reaches his stop and he exits the train onto the outer platform amidst a small crowd of pedestrians, buzzing with life and machine. He pushes his way through, inconsiderate, brushing past the other flesh as though it is water around him. The air is cold, purposely, engineered for the convenience of the cyborg population and their conflagrations of computers. Zobra climbs down the stairs down to the street where speeders whiz by and clumps of sentients muddle this way and that.

Even though it has been years since he walked this planet, it is still as familiar to him as his own body. The streets are old friends, the sky an old lover, and his fellow cyborgs still family after his disgust of them. Unlike most, he escaped his roots here, and plunders the treasures of the galaxy. When he was young, this place seemed so large. Now it seems so small.

His mother's condo is a few blocks away from the station, and he grins as the crowds disperse and he finds his way to her street. Dusk preys about the horizon, and a languid hesitation meddles with the air. Zobra feels suddenly sad.

When he reaches her building, he buzzes his mother's place and a droid answers the door. "Greetings. Might I inquire as to the nature of your call?"

"It's Fimm," Zobra says to the droid. It takes a second for the software to register him and communicate back to her for an answer, but then the droid speaks again: "Of course, Master Zobra. I will unlock the elevator. You mother awaits."

He rides the elevator up with a new nervousness, but not one involving his trigger finger. This is an old nervousness, the kind only found between mothers and their sons.

The door to the elevator slides open and he enters his mother's apartment. It is decorated with relics and two-dimensional art, the walls trembling with nanotech. Gray light is carried in from streets by the windows, giving the place a muted color. This is not where he grew up – that place has been gone for years, subsumed by the city's reclaiming droids. But his mother has lived her for quite some time, her long life enabled by her enhancements, and her life woven into the landscape. Another droid welcomes him, he can hear another messing in the kitchen, and the background noise of a holofeed cluttering the condo.

His mother emerges, makeup and hair perfect, and smiles as she see her son. "Fimm!" she says. She is perhaps in her eighties now, still overweight, with white hair and drooping, wrinkled skin. Like a lot of older cyborgs, her eyes are especially green, gassed with antique cybernetics and dependent upon algorithms now a generation old. Mother Zobra embraces her son, her fingers grasping his plasteel shoulders.

"Hi, mom," Zobra says.

His mother smiles, a tear falling out of her one human eye. Her name is Ketta.

Ketta Zobra lets go of her son, letting her view drift outside the windows, uncomfortable with the emotions of this reunion. Her internal machines do their best to counter the mood, and her next question is inevitable. "Why did you come?"

He does not answer at once, taking in the sight of her, and trying to remember what is must have been like when he was still a boy and she was not an old woman. "I came to see you, of course."

"Ha," she laughs, raising an eyebrow. "You're not in trouble?"

"No more than usual."

"I heard your friend died."

"Who?"

"Paaxta the Hutt. It's been on the HoloNet.

"Did they mention me?"

"No," she says. "Why would they?"

"No reason," he tells her.

Ketta gestures towards the couch. "Have a seat, my son."

He sits his body into the furniture, trying to relax, his breath coming out in short bursts. Ketta also sits down, and stares deep into his eyes. He tries to avoid her gaze at first, but then returns it.

"How long are you staying?"

"Just for the night," he says.

"That's all?"

"I have business."

"Your business is what brought you here?"

"Yes," he admits.

"I'm glad," she tells him.

He enfolds his fingers together, fingers interlocking with fingers. He head aching, turns down the volume on his sensory input, pushing the world out of him. In the rest of the galaxy he is feared; here he is just a boy again, at the mercy of his mother's words.

"Tell me about your life," she says. "Have you met a woman yet?"

Zobra keeps it light. "I meet many women, mom."

"Yes, but I'm inquiring about grandchildren," she tells him. The idea of her as a matriarch always clung to her imagination – this he knows, and he despairs when he has not given her something that would be so simple to give, just a pinch of life, a simple replication of his genetics to do battle against their mortality. His mother is old, and she knows it. She dreams of new life – to hold, to care for, to sync her computers with.

Is he really so selfish? Does his mother know she has raised an evil man? She knows he is a bounty hunter, but that's a reputable position out here. He was granted love as a child, but he has never returned it to either his mother or the rest of the galaxy.

"Soon," he lies to his mother.

Another tear falls from her eye. "Thank you," she says.

They talk sparingly, then have lunch, sitting next to the window in the dappled sunlight, plugged in and recharging their batteries. As nutrients and energy floods his body, he begins to feel less apprehensive, and wonder why he never comes here.

"Why did you really come here?"

He does not want to lie anymore. :For Hueron. I need information from his datalith."

"Why?"

"For a job," he answers.

She knows better than to ask any details about this. Instead she tries a different tactic, exposing herself without realizing it. "I could come with you," she says.

"Mom…"

"Why not? Don't you see how lonely I am here?"

"My life is dangerous," he says.

"My life wanes," she says.

He doesn't know what to say. She has never asked specifically for such a thing. "There are people after me now."

"That's all the more reason for us to stick together," she says.

"I won't be able to protect you."

'I can protect myself."

His eyes take in her fragile form, enclosed by an exoskeleton and powered by motors and servos, dependent upon regular amounts of energy and strict maintenance. It is difficult enough looking after himself. "No," he tells her, unable to cross this bridge.

She does not reply, swallowing and peering out the window at the rabid city.


	4. Chapter 4

**STARWARS: The Late Era: The Voice of the Apparition**

**4.**

After lunch he departs, kissing her and telling her he will be back for dinner. He descends into the city and jumps back on the monorail, which is even busier now, filled with all manner of sentients, though cyborgs of various races are most common of all. He catches sight of a Rodian with a mechanical jaw and realizes sickly that he is home.

He pushes further into the city, down to the lower levels, where the tombs are. HE is let off underground and then he rides a passenger elevator down to the deeper levels where the dataliths are kept. Once among them, he feels a fervent honor. He steps upon a floating disc, holding the handrail gingerly as it lifts gingerly into the air and carries him to the quadrant he is looking for.

As he passes the pocean of dataliths, he remembers something else his father said before his death, when Zobra was just a boy. "Never visit the tombs. Let the dead manage their own company."

His father isn't down here. He greeted death with relief and meaningless resolve: and demanded that he not be encased with the rest of his race in the dataliths, which duplicated the deceased's mind almost too perfectly. This is where his people are kept and remembered, never forgotten. Most races in the galaxy soon find life to be cheap; not so here, among the cyborgs. All of their machines existed to ensure life and stave off death, the dataliths most of all.

Zobra reaches Hueron, who is entombed in a tall, gleaming datalith that blinks in friendship and hums softly with mechanisms. As he approaches, the datalith's eyes open and its voice pours out in effulgent tones. "Zobra!"

"Hi, Hueron,." It is not really Hueron, but just a download of him, a facsimile, a remnant of his personality forever preserved in data. The dataliths are marvelous, ancient technology, in use now for nearly six thousand years. They never fail, but they also never quite live up to the living creatures that beget them. They dream, most of the time, perceiving colors you and I don't know. The dataliths get frequent living visitors, but they never speak amongst themselves.

"You're still alive!" Hueron announces, stunned, in love with the moment.

"So it seems," says Zobra. He remembers how Hueron died – gut incinerated by an autoblaster, on the distant planet of Corellia. It was a job, a supposedly easy job, but it claimed Hueron's life. As he lay dying, Zobra's master confessed that he had not made a backup of himself for at least a decade, and the only living copy of his mind was of a younger, former version, before these last years. Ten years of memories would be annihilated. As his belly smoked with fire, Hueron told Zobra that the last decade of his life was his favorite, and now it was lost forever, like it never existed. Normal humans take this for granted – but not cyborgs, who always keep copies of themselves. Zobra thought of his own memories, and the inky feeling the dataliths gave him since he was a child.

"Blast it, partner, I miss you something fierce."

"I know you do, Hueron."

"Why don't you come down here?"

"You know why."

"Do I?" A light flashes on the datalith as Hueron searches his memory. His eyes blink, and then he speaks slowly. "I suppose I do, I guess."

Zobra reaches out and lays his hand on the black skin of the datalith, letting the minute computers in the sweat of his fingers meet with Hueron's remaining cybernetics.

"One day, you will be here," Hueron says, grim.

"Maybe," says Zobra, unable to imagine his own death.

"I suppose you came to pick my brain."

"Yep."

"What is it this time?"

"That job," Zobra begins. "That one with the baby we stole."

Hueron searches his memory again before speaking. "Oh."

"I just want to know what planet we took her to. I don't need to know who bought the job, or what."

"Why?"

"Because I am going to take her."

The datalith's mechanisms whirr in response. "You were always one crazy cyborg," Hueron says. "Why should I tell you? What's it worth to me?"

"I'll talk to you for an hour," Zobra says.

"When?"

"Now."

"Really?"

"Whatever you want to talk about."

"No one else visits me, Zobra."

"I know, Hueron, I'm sorry."

"The name of the planet is Zymogia," Hueron says. "But the girl is probably dead. Anyway, she'd be worthless now – that whole thing has died down. No one remembers her."

"See, I got the feeling they do…" Zobra explains. "And I need something like that right now."

"You're in trouble?"

"Yeah."

"How big?"

"I killed a Hutt."

"Who?"

"Paaxta."

"Why?"

"Because she paid me to," he says, matter-of-factly.

Hueron says nothing to this. His servos click. "Can we talk now?"

"Yeah," says Zobra, smiling. "We can talk."


	5. Chapter 5

**STARWARS: The Late Era: The Voice of the Apparition**

**5.**

After the hour is up, he says a thousand goodbyes to Hueron, and rides the elevator back up into the city. He boards another train, bound for his mother's. As he stands there he can feel a disturbance in the Force around him, and his eyes turn to a train window, where he spies two hooded aliens – Barabels – watching him, their reptilian faces intent with murder.

_They found me. _

He shudders, letting his fingers drift over to his blaster ever so slowly. He watches them out of the corner of his eye, and when the train starts to slow for the next station, he spins and blasts both of them. The other passengers scream. Zobra takes a blood and brain wave sample from one of the Barabels. The train comes to a stop and Zobra jumps up and runs out the door, disappearing.

He hails a cab and falls into the back seat as it floats over the city. He checks the energy on his blaster, and his own biostats on his HUD. It will take another hour for his computer to analyze and discover the planets the Barabels have recently been to, each leaving a chemical signature in the blood he took. Then he plays back the last moment of the Barabel's life: standing on the train, hyped up on stims, paid to do a job, and certain to be dead in seconds.

Now he worries about his mother, who they must know about. He never thought they would find him so quickly! Perhaps they were trailing him since before Paaxta. Anything is possible.

His implants jolt him with electricity, trying to calm his nerves. _No. No!_

The speeder lets him off at the condo and he bangs on his mother's door.

There is no answer.

He kicks down the door with his heavily enhanced legs, and runs up the stairs. His cybernetics kick into overdrive, ready for anything, painkillers poised, adrenals warmed. His response time is up, his senses open, and his targeting systems come online.

Zobra reaches his mother's suite and finds the door burnt to a crisp. He draws his blaster and steps quietly inside. He silently sends out a signal to her computers, hoping to find her network near –

Nothing.

The two droids are mangled upon the floor. There are laser burns across the carpet. Zobra creeps to his mother's sitting room, where she probably would have hid. He finds her face down on the floor.

He falls to his knees and lifts her into his arms – she is dead. "Mom!" he shouts at her. "Mom!"

His fingers still clench his blaster. He begs the Force for mercy, begs her to come back. When did she perform her last download? Today? Twenty years ago? All the colors of the Force appear before him, and he convulses in grief.

_I can't stay here. Security is coming. I can hear their frequencies. They'll want to detain me. I have to go. _

He hears a set of footsteps behind him, the cold murmur of a Barabel heartbeat. He turns and finds another bounty hunter standing over him, pointing a blaster at his face. "Where's money?" the Barabel asks, in clumsy Basic.

Zobra however is powered to full capacity, and leaps at an incredible speed, crushing the Barabel's blaster in his plasteel grip, while his other hand draws his gun and jabs it in the Barabel's chest.

"Yaaargh!" the Barabel yelps, probably cursing in its own language. Zobra shrugs and blasts the creatures face into a trickling, bubbling, melting mess.

Smoke fills the room as the Barabel collapses to the floor. Zobra spits, and then kneels next to his mom for one last time. He kisses her forehead, and grabs her hand, and says something quietly that no one else hears.

Then he makes a break for it.


	6. Chapter 6

**STARWARS: The Late Era: The Voice of the Apparition**

**6.**

Once he is in hyperspace he measures himself and the new grief before him. He hides in the speeds of light. Days pass.

"Sir," pleads Cee-Dee-Seven. "Why don't you eat, sir?" Her wound is looking more and more oily, and he promises himself that once he decodes this pain he will sit her down and fix her.

After mulling it over for hours, he opens up the nav computer and finds the system closer than he imagined: Zymogia. He remembers the planet more and more nowL the sound of their droids coming out of the water, the waves beating against the edges of the city, the smell of the toxic sea. It's an ominous world.

It's deeper in Hutt Space, a slave dependent planet, unwise for a human to visit. That's why it's such a good place to hide someone.

He sets the coordinates and then finally takes Cee-Dee down into the work bay of the ship, and patches her face with plasteel. She wasn't designed for combat, but Zobra finds her useful as a distraction during blaster fights. He usually has to fix her afterwards.

She is his best friend, un-alive as she may be, and now with his mother gone, she is his closest companion on this side of the galaxy. He has been in Hutt Space for most of his life, it is his home. The Republic – he feels endangered in the Republic. Out here, he is free. There is quite the population of cyborgs in Hutt Space, safe as it is for advanced and illegal cybernetic procedures. Taboos are looser here. Zobra admits his heavily altered body – there is no hiding it. About forty-five percent of him was mechanical, which is a lot, and though he does not require constant maintenance, he does require constant power. If he doesn't recharge every ten days he dies.

They fall out of hyperspace and Zymogia comes into view: colored like black rust, swept with sharp emerald clouds. A small, insignificant planet, whose main industry consists of harvesting toxic deep see fauna by giant droids that are managed by human slaves. Things have been this way for thousands of years, and long swathes of slave generations have been born, worked, and died here. They are owned and then their children are owned by the slave masters, an obscure race of triopods that is known to be found only here, and nowhere else in the galaxy.

The planet also now stands on a newly discovered trade route, and things have changed – there's more exporting so there more importing, and new businesses thrive in the chaotic environment. Enterprising slaves buy their freedom and then become masters themselves; human life has little value here. Now there are more humans than triopods on the planet, with rebellion and volatility threatening the planet's newfound success. The triopods are harsh masters, and devoutly religious – Zobra likes them.

There's little to no computerized supervision of the skies here; it's total anarchy. Zobra takes the controls, prays to the Force, and then swoops in from over the oceans, landing at a derelict hangar on the southern side of the largest city. He lands, automates the ship's defense systems, and then he and the droid depart. He has armed Cee-Dee with a light blaster, but it's like she can really aim it. She will appear to be a danger though, giving Zobra an edge over his enemies once she starts firing recklessly, taking blaster shots like a champion into her synth-iron chassis.

He doesn't expect gunfire – not at today's meeting – but he has to play it safe here. He and Cee-Dee arrive at the right cantina, and they enter the smoky, noisy den. It's crowded, as it is after work and the slaves are wasting their earnings on spice and drink. Zobra doesn't understand why sentients pay their slaves in Hutt Space, but that's how they do it. There is a kind of nobility to the cruelty, a polite maiming. Still, slavery can be a good life, especially on the richer Hutt worlds, as they spend their money easily.

Zobra arches his back as he is hit by a bolt of pain in the center of his skull, near where the nuclei of his cybernetic power coupler spread into his nerves. _Someone's jamming me!_

He finds his contact in the back of the cantina, near the band, where the is loudest, and the lights are dark. The contact is some kind of bird-like humanoid, a race Zobra is not familiar with. Unknown races can be unpredictable, but he kills this fear with a well-placed synthetic endorphin.

Zobra settles into the seat opposite the contact, and sizes up the alien as well as he can: long face with a wide maw of nasty teeth, feathers coming out of the alien's head like hair does a human's; dressed in dented armor littered with radiation bites. The alien is drinking something with insects in it, and the little creatures pour out of the rim as the alien bring the glass up to his lips. To his surprise, Zobra sees that a tall, armed droid sits next to the alien, staring at him with its big single red eye. Zobra can smell the freeness of the droid; a wild droid, using wild fuels and circuitry. There are autonomous robots out here, but not many in this line of work, and Zobra decides to attack this development with sarcasm. "I see you brought your girlfriend."

Cee-Dee translates, her electric voice calling out of her speakers. She mimics Zobra's intonations, and the facetiousness is obvious in the droid's manner. In an instant Zobra recognizes a frown on the alien's face; then the alien barks back. Cee-Dee hesitantly translates: "He says he sees you brought a girlfriend too."

"Yeah, but I gave him fair warning I was," Zobra says. "This is a surprise to me and I don't like surprises. This is a blasted assassin droid, I think!"

Cee-Dee translates. The alien laughs, and lifts up his hands, in some sort of communication error. Then the alien introduces himself as the Guxuant. The Guxuant is a slave trader, a headhunter, a merchant of other fine goods and services; his expertise comes at a high price.

"I need muscle," Zobra tells him.

"What kind of muscle?" The Guxuant asks in return.

"A lot of muscle."

The Guxuant speaks a long paragraph then folds his arms in front of his chest. "For something illegal?" Cee-Dee translates.

"I didn't know that word existed out here," Zobra complains.

"The Hutts have their taxes, just like the Republic and the Mandalorians," the Guxuant expounds. "If you want the Hutts to look the other way, you have to give them a lot of money."

"And you?"

"I also demand a high fee."

Zobra shrugs. "Fine." He pauses, thinking. "Do you know who I am?"

"I know what you want me to know, sir."

"Looking for a job, then, friend?" Zobra becomes curious.

"The Guxuant dream of brighter horizons," the alien says. "A man like you, you need employees, not private contractors."

"Well – I'll think about it," Zobra says. "I need five men to pull this off. And they need to be armed, but capable of responsibility.

"I can get you five Guxuant. Is that what you want? And the wild droid, too."

"That's what I want, says Zobra, happy this is turning out so easy. He looks the wild droid in the eye again. "I thought you free automatons valued life," he comments.

"I value Republic credits," the assassin droid replies. "This is how I was made – I cannot fight myself."

Zobra laughs. Obviously this droid has not had a memory wipe in quite some time, leading to derangement and a personality. Still, Zobra thinks sometimes that droids have souls – or at least the ones he's known have. Wild droids are more and more common across Hutt Space, where anything goes as usual. But one a wild assassin droid was something else entirely. "The credits will flow," Zobra says, "If you do your job like everybody else."

"I will do my job as long as the credits come to me," the wild droid says. It's voice is thin, but coarse, low, but confident.

"I guess that means you're like any other free sentient I know," says Zobra. "Fine. "We'll do it like this."

The Guxuant claps his hands. "Yes."

Zobra personally locates the target. He dissolves into the crowds and asks slaves he passes about the girl. "She would be about fifteen years old now. Dark hair, black eyes. A slave, worth money. Worth aurodium." Aurodium is a common currency in Hutt Space, a precious metal whose value rarely fluctuates.

He asks many. He asks for hours. But he finds the right one, the one his sensors tell him is lying, and he grabs her wrist tightly and pulls the slave toward him, drawing his blaster and pointing it in her belly. She is middle-aged, skinny, and does not resist; she only gasps, expecting to die, like a slave. "Where is the girl?" Zobra asks again.

"She works with the trawlers. She does repair. I know her because she is strong in the Force, and her deeds have echoed."

"Where can I find her?"

"Out along the Sea."

"The sea is everywhere." Zobra grabs her by the hair, jabbing her more with the blaster. "Where?"

"On the Eastern side of the city. In the slums next to the droid hive. Please – I have a child at camp…"

Zobra releases her, slapping aurodium into her hands. "Go!" he hisses, pushing her back into the crowd. He hails a speeder and takes it to the other side of the city, where the droid driver lets him off in front of a gargantuan facility that he knows must be the droid hive, a common technology in Hutt Space. Here the droids lived in active freedom for a fourth of their day, allowed to go where they like in the hive as long as they show up for work on time, every time. It seems the whole galaxy is changing.

Repairing the giant droids that scour the ocean for sea weeds is the only life these slaves ever know. It almost makes Zobra sad, but he has accepted the unfair nature of the galaxy, and permits little sympathy for those who cannot help themselves, even if death is their only option.

After sending Cee-Dee back to the ship, Zobra watches the main entrance to the droid hive for hours; automatons and their corresponding slaves come in and out all night, as the shifts rotate. As designated hours, the droids rise from the ocean, water pouring from them, dragging their plump nets behind them, met by humans on the beach who climb atop the droids' heads and manage their computers back to the hive. Farming the sea weed is actually quite dangerous, as there are droid-eating sea beasts prowling the world ocean, so maintenance on the robots is persistent.

A good bounty hunter knows how to sit and watch something for long hours, waiting, but never impatient. He lurks for his prey. And during a particularly gray hour of the morning, he finally sees her, rushing out of the hive towards a droid coming out of the tempestuous waves. She is in her teens, without cybernetics, a regular human, and his scans place her at the appropriate age. She has a kind of rose-ashen skin, and short black hair. She is about average in height. From the shadows, his computers record her face: it is determined, but lonely, with dutiful black eyes and a resolute but sad jaw. Zobra watches as the girl climbs atop the giant droid and begins messing with its servos and other mechanisms as it slogs up the beach.

_That's her._

But he could never take her now. What if someone still watches him? What will they do if he approaches the girl? They must be wondering what he's doing on this planet. He told the Guxuant little; and he hears no rumors of himself around the city.

_Someone knows. Someone remembers. _

He knows where she is – that is enough for now.

Zobra goes back to the cantina where he finds and easy woman who doesn't mind his cybernetics – a slave woman, working at night. She has an apartment and she takes him to it. He has been dwelling on death, and his flesh demands life.

Even his genitals are cybernetic and regulated by machines. As he and the woman lay together, his body is micromanaged and engineered for peak performance and total registration of pleasure. Hi cybernetics stimulate his sensations as he devours with his hands, mouth, and penis. When he touches her, he feels the Force, touches something eternal, beyond this moment.

Afterwards the woman invites him to sleep there – for more aurodium. He considers this development, but decides it's not safe. He pays the slave and leaves.

He descends back onto the streets where the flesh dealers show their wares and gangs of young triopods roam around with autoblasters, shooting slaves and laughing like machines sputtering. The night is alit with the five moons of the planet, which hover in the sky in various shapes and colors, casting a mad light below. Zobra finds another speeder and heads back to his hangar, dreaming of his bed and Cee-Dee-Seven's sub-ordinary cooking.

He arrives home – something is wrong. The ship's auto-defenses have been shut off and the shields are down. He draws his blaster and activates his complex targeting programs, tiptoeing up the airlock ramp, and punching a code into the lock. The door slides open and he is greeted by darkness - everything on the ship seems to be turned off. He switches his ocular enhancements to perceive in infrared. He creeps into the ship.

There is a sound in the back near the engine. Zobra makes his way there, drawing in the air of the silent ship as he prowls with his blaster in front. When he reaches the noise, he leaps inside and blasts whatever is moving: which turns out to be Cee-Dee.

"Sir! You shot me again!" Laser holes spread across her torso.

"Ah, I didn't mean to do that! Why are all the lights and defense systems off? Did someone attack?"

"Attack? No, sir, I'm just saving energy. Our energy costs are quite…" Cee-Dee makes a sound like she's chuckling, the result of her own infrequent memory purges. "Our energy costs are quite costly," she finishes.

"Saving energy?" Zobra explodes. "Never do that again, Cee-Dee! You could have been attacked. Everyone is after me."

"I figured no one would notice a ship with its power off, sir. I hoped – that we would be invisible, which, we are, sir."

Zobra exhales loudly. "Turn everything back on and forget about saving energy!"

He storms off to his cabin. Once there he peels off his armor and his removable cybernetics, and showers, washing the planet and the woman away as best he can. He tries to figure out what to do next: how they will take the girl without anybody realizing it. They must be quiet about it."

"It has to be now," says a ghoulish voice behind him. Zobra turns: it's the red apparition again.

"What?" Zobra asks, already in a state of complete exhaustion.

"It has to be now," the red apparition tells him. The glow of the ghost fills the cabin, casting the spirit's hawkish profile across the walls. "Everything is in place now."

"How do you know?"

"I know," says the ghost. "She sleeps now, but she – she awakes! You must hurry."

Was he going insane? "Who are you? Why should I listen to you?"

"I am a voice from the past," says the apparition. "And I need you as you need me."

"What do I need from you?"

"Information."

"What kind of information?"

"The kind that will save your life." The ghost speaks with a thick Empyrean accent.

"Are you of one of the five Houses? A Force Knight?" To Zobra, the apparition resembles the five schools' warrior monks.

"No! Not one of those fools, no. I am a Sith."

"What's a Sith?"

"A Sith is power incarnate," the ghost says. "A Sith is the living will of the Force."

"The Force guides us," says Zobra. At times like this – when he is utterly helpless and confused, which doesn't happen often – he embraces cyborg religion. "The Force has no will. It only has currents."

"Lies," the ghost proclaims. "Your Houses lie to you, my friend."

"The Force is the truth," Zobra replies, quoting something, somebody, something he learned about as a boy.

"No!" says the red apparition. "We are the truth! While we live…"

"Then you are a lie?"

"My truth has died around me," the ghost says sadly. Then he throws his piercing eyes straight at Zobra. "You must go! I promise you!"

"Prove it to me," Zobra tells him.

"I cannot, but for my existence. But I promise, and a Sith's promise means more than a Jedi promise, at least."

"A Jedi?"

"Nevermind," says the apparition. "But go!"

He disappears.

Zobra scratches his head, and pulls out his holocommunicator, connecting to the Guxuant over the HoloNet. "The time is now," Zobra says to the alien.

"You pay more money for now."

"How about I kill you and your girlfriend instead?" Zobra asks, angry. "Same deal, and we do it now."

"Maybe my wild droid have itchy trigger finger. Maybe she disrupts your ship's security field and gas you with chemicals."

"No – we do it now," Zobra says, as dry as he can, letting anger stir in his voice, and an attitude he hopes the Guxuant appreciates. But –

"Money. More. For now." The Guxuant flickers over the HoloNet.

Zobra swears to himself silently. "Okay," he says, intending not to pay the alien a single credit.


	7. Chapter 7

STARWARS : The Late Era: The Voice of the Apparition

**7.**

It is night, or what passes as such here, with the moons still high in the sky and a translucent darkness everywhere. The city, for the most part, is quiet, and the dominant sound is the pounding of the waves on the shores around it. Zobra and his men – the five Guxuant and the wild droid – speed down to the droid hive. Everything is set. Zobra watches the facility through electrobinoculars as his men take up positions around the entrance.

They wait for the girl. Scanners place her awake, and making her way through the facility, silently, in preparation for work, along with the other slaves. Zobra draws a lock on her location using his triangulating devices. They wait.

When she does come out, the light is just starting to break, and one of the moons is slipping over the horizon. They cut their radio chatter and tense up, preparing for the action. As the girl exits the building, two of the Guxuant start heading across the plaza up front towards her, nonchalantly, the first point of contact.

Zobra watches. He feels something in the Force, someone confusing, something new.

The girl and the Guxuant approach each other. She seems to think nothing of it. They meet – the Guxuant touch her arm and stop her; one of them mutters something she doesn't understand. Then the other Guxuant grabs the girl by the wrist and starts pulling her toward the street, ahead of schedule.

The girl starts to scream. A Guxuant strikes her, giving the plaza an appalling silence. Other slaves point and watch.

_Blast it! _

Zobra gets up from his vantage point and heads down the street, where he meets a speeder operated by the wild droid. He jumps in and they race off to the plaza.

But when they get to the rendezvous the two Guxuant are empty-handed, and Zobra can see the girl running towards the nearby slums. They follow, but the pedestrian traffic is like soup, and the girl escapes.

"Track her!" Zobra's hand clutches his blaster as he rides in the speeder.

"She appears to be headed to a residential district," says the wild droid, its scanner rotating atop its head.

"Don't lose her!" Zobra commands. "She's priceless!"

The wild droid tilts its head and widens its eye at the bounty hunter, but then turns back to driving, expertly maneuvering the speeder. Such a droid wasn't designed for driving, but the free automaton has probably performed reckless upgrades on itself.

The girl enters the building a few miles north from the droid hive, an apartment complex of low repute, mostly housing semi-free slaves. The Guxuant follow. Meanwhile the wild droid manages through the alien flotsam; enough to impress Zobra, a little.

"What do you want us to do?" his communicator translates over to him.

"Just keep her there!"

"We will. Wait – she's CZRRRKSK!" The radio crumbles into static.

"Do you read?" Zobra asks into the communicator. He gets no reply. He turns to the assassin droid. "Let's go."

They hurry up to the elevator: Zobra, the remaining Guxuant, and the wild droid. When they reach the right floor they can smell laser fire and Zobra swears loudly as they near the apartment.

After one final blast, the silence ensures, and the only thing Zobra can hear is a powerful hum coming from inside the apartment.

The girl steps out through the busted door, turning towards them, holding a red laser sword.

"Shakeete!" says the Guxuant. It's a common word for "Force User." The Guxuant raises his blaster instinctively and throws a couple of shots at the girl without thinking.

The girl bounces them off her laser sword and they come back and strike the Guxuant in the head, blowing a crisp hole through his brains. The Guxuant collapses as the girl stands before them, watching for their next move.

The wild droid whirrs and steps forward, but does not raise its blaster. It clicks, then there is a loud "Pft!" as it shoots out a paralyzing electrodart. But the girl moves at an amazing speed, and dodges it without effort.

"Wait!" says Zobra. "Stop! We're not here to hurt you."

"Who are you," the girl asks, trembling. She has a sharp outer rim accent.

"I am Zobra," he says. "The question is: do you know who you are?"

"I'm just Vemma," the girl says, eyeing him closely. "There's nothing special about me."

"That's where you're wrong," Zobra tells her.

"If you don't stop, I'll kill you," the girl says.

"Don't be naïve. There's no escape for you. I've faced your kind before."

The wild droid takes another step forward, unsheathing a vibrobaton from its arm.

"Tell your droid to stop," Vemma says.

"It's not my droid," Zobra snickers.

The droid steps forward again, inching closer to the girl. The only way out is through them.

Then there's a male's voice behind, risen in terror: "Vemma!"

Zobra turns. There is an old man with a blaster rifle pointed at them. "Just stay right there," the old man stutters, aiming at the droid. "I'll shoot both of you."

"Dantid!" gasps the girl. "Run!"

Zobra turns back to her and considers the heat of the laser sword she is holding. For a moment he is unsure as to what to do. But he spins and fires his blaster at the old man, incinerating his chest and face in laser light.

The girl screams and runs toward Zobra, laser sword high. He's seen her kind before, and she is obviously… untrained. But still –

_I'm dead._

Sparks fly; the wild droid jumped in front of the girl's strike, losing an arm in the process. Zobra – dumbfounded – lifts up his left arm where he keeps his tranquilizers, and fires one at the girl. But the Force is with her, and she dodges this as well. With another strike she cuts the wild droid cleanly in half, and then points the laser sword at Zobra.

"Your hate isn't strong enough to stop me," she says.

He nods, agreeing, letting her pass. Watching him out of the corner of her eye, she kneels knelt to the dead man, taking his hand in her own and saying something only they hear.

Then she runs.

Sirens erupt as the girl escapes. Zobra sighs and takes in the mess around him. In a moment of weakness he kicks the dead Guxuant in the face. Afterwards, compassion and curiosity come over him, and he drags what's left of the wild droid with him.


	8. Chapter 8

**STARWARS: The Late Era: The Words of the Red Apparition**

**8.**

_I should be rot._

Once aboard his ship and racing up into the sky, Zobra's mind lets go and he feels the Force rush into him – that feeling of unending time and cataclysmic gears, of all possibility blooming like knives. He doesn't often let his emotions get the best of him – but when it comes to the Force, he submits.

It's his outlet, his spiritual shore to climb from the mortal sea. He can be a cold manm but never doubt his religiousness. He didn't _believe _in the Force; he _knew_ the Force.

Cee-Dee-Seven does her work around the ship, saying little – she knows the Force too; or so Zobra thinka to himself at times like this. He considers the plight of the droid: programmed, trapped in servitude, a lesser being; but he also believes to himself that the things have souls after all – everything does. He stares at the wild droid but does not tinker with it – not yet.

Zobra is not still. He studies maps, trade routes, holofeeds; there is nothing there. He reaches out with his new money: still nothing. How did she escape off the planet? Where has she gone?

Vemma.

He could let her go; move on; and go enjoy his money. Or he could follow.

_ I'll find her. _

Then there are other moments, when he feels the presence of his mother. He turns – but she is not there. Something whispers but dares not speak. He thinks of her, carefully, tripping into memories of her when he's doing the weirdest things, sometimes when he's not even thinking about her at all. Her laughing, smiling face is conjured in his brain, and as far as his instruments and implants can tell: she is real, preserved, in the swells of his memory; her eyes light up and her heart still beats in his mind.

But she is fading –

Using his computers, he records the memories, securing them on datacrons, stacking them on the table. He does not review them. These are for others; not him. These are for her.

"Sir?" the droid asks him, one day, as he sits waiting for information, hunched over the wet computer, which is steaming with effort.

He steps back from a memory: "Yes, CeeDee?"

"Sir – there's a communication coming through for you."

"Who is it?"

"It says it's your mother, sir!"

He rushes to the holocommunicator, clicking on the holo. A pale blue image comes into view – it's not his mother, it's –

"Dagon Prisk," Zobra mutters.

"Did you like that joke?" the blue image laughs. It flickers, and becomes easier to make out: it's an Iridonian man, dressed in a casual tunic, his horned forehead broad, his eyes white, his face tattooed black. Dagon is an old rival of Zobra's – not to mention the fact that Dagon is responsible for Hueron's death. "I couldn't get through to you, so I decided to disguise myself as your old ma. Clever, huh?"

"Why do you think I would want to speak to you, you creepy farce?" Zobra's hand twitches for his blaster – but there is nothing to shoot.

"Oh – I don't know. I just wanted to let you know that everybody that matters knows you killed Paxta now, thanks to me. And pretty soon the whole galaxy will know. And we all know you stole her money."

"What?"

"Don't you think it a little dastardly of Paxta to trick you into killing her, for a small slice of her empire?" Dagon sighs.

"This was all Paxta's idea?"

"Of course it was!" Dagon laughs again. "She knew – and I knew – that you wouldn't say no."

"She was dead anyway," Zobra says.

"So? You still killed her – and kidnapped her son."

"There was no youngling."

"I know that, but _they_ don't know that, if you know what I mean. And they're not going to find out, because the youngling will never be found, as you will be killed before he is freed."

"You smudge of feces." Zobra is trapped, and he knows it.

"Why, that's some language there, Captain Zobra." Dagon puts his hands on his hips and chuckles. "We'll find you, you know?"

"I'll be waiting, you blasted ass. You better be coming yourself, because I want to kill you." Zobra speaks with saliva gathering in the back of his throat – he wants to kill Dagon that bad.

"Oh I'll be coming, Fimm. By the way – I heard you were in a little shouting match on Zymogia. Working with Guxuant, huh? How did you sink so low?"

_Enough!_

"My mother is dead, and you know that," Zobra tells Dagon. "Did you ever consider that I know where your children live?"

"My children?" Dagon's shoulders twist in uncertainty. "You wouldn't touch them, Zobra. We're professionals."

"I don't give a blasted damn about that," Zobra says, truthfully. "If someone attacks me, my next stop will be your brood."

"This is business. Don't do that," Dagon spits.

"I'm already doing it," Zobra replies, shutting down the holocommunicator and casting Dagon's voice off his ship.

Despair takes him though – despite his threats, he knows they have him, and pretty soon he will not be able to show his face anywhere.

_But not if I have the girl_, he thinks. _Then – then I will have real power._

The voice of the red apparition comes once more while Zobra is in Hutt Space. One night the ghost appears; bringing with him a fiery decay. "I could feel the Dark Side in her, couldn't you?" the apparition asks him, of the girl, Vemma.

"I felt something…" Zobra says, twisting his fingers in his hands. "Were you there?"

"I am everywhere, my friend."

"Who are you?"

The apparition smiles, dastardly. "I come from a different age," he says, not answering the question.

"Why did you come to me?"

"Because your actions speak to me… if you understand that."

"What do you want from me?"

"Many things…"

"I'll blast my head open before I am a slave to a figment," Zobra tells the ghost.

"I'm not asking you to be my slave. I'm asking you to be my partner; perhaps… my student.,,"

"What have the dead to teach?"

"Great powers, Zobra. Things you cannot imagine. I feel the Force flowing through you. You must harness it!"

Zobra, religious as ever, considers the possibility of such wisdom. "I do not trust something I cannot shoot."

The apparition laughs. "Nor should you. I'm not asking you to trust me – you may nurse whatever doubt you like. I'm asking you – instead – to _believe_ in me."

"What does that mean?"

"I just want you to listen to my counsel. I have foreseen that you will need it."

"You have 'foreseen' it?"

"Yes…"

Zobra clenches his fists. Only the highest House priests are allowed to spy upon the future in Zobra's cyborg metaphysics. "You speak of ill omens," Zobra mutters. "Yet you are one yourself."

"I am that, I agree," says the apparition. "But I bring good tidings, for you."

"Like what?"

"Perhaps… knowledge of the system the girl has fled too…"

"Where?"

"I'm not going to tell you until you bend to your knees and call me 'Master'." The apparition strokes his chin.

"I will never do such a thing," Zobra promises.

"You won't?"

"Never."

"That's a pity," says the ghost.

"I am the Master here."

"I doubt that," the red apparition tells him, teeth sharp. "I floated among these stars for over four hundred years before I died – and two hundred years since. I am more powerful than you can possibly imagine."

"Go to Hell," Zobra spits.

"I am in Hell, my good friend, and I have brought it to you." The apparition raises its arm at Zobra –

And he is hit by a piercing white pain deep in the center of his mind, like a thick needle of ice, carving through his mind. His memories shudder, the world goes blank, and jagged sense-contusions toll deep in his skull. "Aaaaaargk!" Zobra cries, holding his head in his hands, bending to one knee.

The red apparition releases the gesture, and releases Zobra. The bounty hunter climbs up to his feet, half-vomiting. "I don't know how. I don't know when. But I'm going to destroy you," he tells the ghost.

The ghost cackles. "I have risen above death. Nothing can hurt me."

"I'll kill you."

"Oh?"

The apparition raises his arm again, and the pain strikes Zobra, this time twice as hard, twice as fast, with few interruptions to its horrible current. Zobra falls to his knees again, and then to his hands and knees. He gurgles words but in his agony cannot speak.

The apparition releases him with a twist of the wrist. Zobra coughs and spits, still on his hands and knees.

"I am your new Master," the apparition tells him. "I will teach you the way of the Dark Side."

Zobra, trying to recover from the pain, sits back on his knees, dragging his eyes up to look into the apparition's face, then falling to the ghost's feet."

"Yes, Master."

The End.


End file.
